Learning about Alexa skills from a solutions architect

I wrote my first “Hello World” at the beginning of 7th grade. Loved computers ever since and actually got through AP Computer Science in high school. But then my love of writing and performing took over. I ended up studying Creative Writing in college. My claims to fame in the 90s all revolved around things I wrote and published online. One of my jokes even has its own Snopes.com page.

My philosophy for keeping things moving is “when in doubt, build something.” That’s taken me in a number of interesting directions.

I’ve spent nearly 11 of the last 22 years with Amazon, but not all in a row. I’ve done things there ranging from being Senior Editor at the Internet Movie Database to writing developer-facing documentation for an AWS service that crowdsources the annotation of machine learning training data.

Along the way, the “build something” philosophy led me to teach myself a few programming languages, get some certifications, found a volunteer group that teaches kids to code, and make some fun projects including an Alexa skill that rolled a Sphero robot around the stage at a couple of tech conferences.

I’m in this role because I found something that lets me be a little silly, do my favorite things (writing, teaching, performing, coding), work with an amazing team, and work with fascinating emerging technology. I’m just happy Amazon lets me do it.

Explain why developers can / should use Adobe XD to create storyboards.#

It’s our goal to offer developers, designers and creators a variety of options to build great voice experiences with the tools they are familiar with. Adobe XD is one of those options.

We also have some free templates available for you to use with it.

Explain the backend resources that can be used to work with Alexa (i.e. AWS, Alexa hosted, custom endpoints)#

Essentially there are two options: Alexa-Hosted and Custom Endpoints.

With Alexa-Hosted, Amazon Alexa provides your skill with a set of AWS resources. The upside is that you don’t need to have an AWS account or know how to configure the services. The downside is that your use of these services has some limits.

These limits are generous, and enough, for many different skills to run well, even in commercial release, but if you have a skill that requires a bigger set of resources or will drive enough traffic to exceed the limits of Alexa-Hosted, you’ll want to set up your own custom endpoints.

Custom endpoints are another name for self-hosting. You can self-host via AWS or via your own servers in your own datacenter.

Which is preferred and why?#

We prefer Alexa-Hosted for this project because it’s fairly simple. We don’t have to delve very far into the backend configuration, if at all. You can focus on building your skill.

Once you begin building bigger and more complex skills that surpass Alexa Hosted capabilities, it’s important to understand what your skill needs and what’s going to help it run most efficiently so you provide the best experience and fastest possible response time.

What’s included with Alexa-hosted?#

With an Alexa-hosted skill, you can build, edit, and publish a skill without leaving the developer console. You get access to an AWS Lambda endpoint, an Amazon S3 bucket for media storage, and an Amazon S3-backed key-value table for managing session persistence. The code editor allows you to edit the backend code for your skill and deploy directly to AWS Lambda. When you create the skill, the service also sets up an AWS CodeCommit repository for managing your code, which you can access by using the ASK CLI to edit your skill.

The limits are generous, and for most skills, there’s no need for more. But for high-traffic skills or ones needing complex infrastructure, you will need to provision the additional resources in your own AWS account.

What should I name my Cakewalk?#

When you first set up your skill, go to the invocation name section of the Build Tab and change the invocation name. Based on the default “Hello World” skill that gets set up, the name starts out as “change Me.”

People skip that step, then when they start trying their skills and asking Alexa to “open cake walk,” they actually open someone else’s Cake Walk skill. Just to be on the safe side, we recommend adding another word to the invocation name to make it more unique and be less likely to accidentally invoke someone else’s skill.

Something like “daves sweet cake walk” (no punctuation, because it’s not allowed in invocation names) helps. Use your imagination and make it family friendly.

Can you give some detail on the interaction model?#

The interaction model lives on the Build tab of the developer console and consists of your invocation name, your intents, and your slots. It basically tells Alexa everything to help interpret, parcel out, and route the things said to your skill.

How do utterance, intent, and slots interact?#

When defining an intent, you provide sample utterances; things people might say that would trigger that intent. In those sample utterances, you can define slots.

For example, if Alexa asked “What’s your name?” we might have a “GetName” intent with “my name is {name}” as a sample utterance. In that sample, “{name}” is a slot. When Alexa sends the information to your skill handler, she’ll tell the handler that she got a “GetName” intent with a “name” slot value of whatever name you said.

Now your “GetNameHandler” function in the script might respond with “Hi,” followed by the value in the “name” slot.

What are some voice design best practices?#

We have documentation available through our Alexa Design Guide that can help you understand the principles of situational voice design. The guide is divided into four design patterns including:

• Be adaptable: Let users speak in their own words.
• Be personal: Individualize your entire interaction.
• Be available: Collapse your menus; make all options top-level.
• Be relatable: Talk with them, not at them.

What’s the difference between auto delegation and dialog management?#

Auto-delegation tells Alexa “I need all of these slots filled before you send the Intent and the slot values,” and lets Alexa handle getting the slots that weren’t filled based on some sample prompts for how to get those slot values.

Dialog management tells Alexa “I need all of these slots filled, so if you don’t have values for some of them, let me know when you send the Intent, I’ll evaluate what’s missing, and then tell you how to proceed in getting the other bits.”

For example, let’s say I’m asking for three pieces of information, but I can work from any two. That’s something I can manage with dialog management, but it’s too complex for auto-delegation.

What do you mean by situational design?#

Situational Design is another name for how you break up all the conversations that your customer might have with your skill. For each exchange you script out, you name it with the situation.

For example, with Cake Walk, the first time the customer launches the skill, the situation is “Launch - Birthday unknown” So you might script it like this:

Customer: Alexa, open cake walk.

Alexa: Hi, welcome to cake walk. When is your birthday?

You’ve defined the situation, the utterance that initiated the exchange, and what Alexa says or asks for.

By thinking about the different situations you’ll have to handle, you can build your dialogues around them.

What is a multi-turn dialog?#

One where Alexa will need to have multiple back-and-forth exchanges with the customer to get the information it needs to fulfill an intent.

Single Turn:

Customer: “Alexa, set a reminder to order dinner for 5 o’clock this afternoon.”

Alexa: “Okay, I’ll remind you at 5 p.m.”

Multi-Turn:

Customer: “Alexa, set a reminder to order dinner.”

Alexa: “When should I remind you?”

Customer: “5 o’clock.”

Alexa: “Okay, I’ll remind you at 5 p.m.”

What is Amazon’s goal of investing in educational content?#

We’re investing in developers and dreamers. We want to inspire people to create Alexa skills, then help them understand how to make their skills even better.